Patriot Ledger reporter living in Watertown reflects on her experience

At mid-day Sunday, on Nichols Street in Watertown, a magnolia tree was in full bloom, the sun was shining, the sky was cloudless and blue, and a young boy was riding his bike on the sidewalk with his mother’s help. Families went in and out of houses. It all seemed so normal. Normal is just what I wanted, after a harrowing day of lockdown on Friday and first steps toward recovery on Saturday.

At mid-day Sunday, on Nichols Street in Watertown, a magnolia tree was in full bloom, the sun was shining, the sky was cloudless and blue, and a young boy was riding his bike on the sidewalk with his mother’s help. Families went in and out of houses. It all seemed so normal.

Normal is just what I wanted, after a harrowing day of lockdown on Friday and first steps toward recovery on Saturday. Nichols Street is where the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects were involved in an intense gunfight with police about 1 a.m. Friday.

I heard on the radio Sunday that some people had been looking for bloodstains in the street where one of the suspects was fatally wounded. I had no desire for that at all. I’d seen plenty on the news.

I live a few blocks away, and like most other residents of Watertown, had spent Friday inside my home, complying with the police order not to go out. After being wakened at about 2:20 a.m. by an automated phone message, I found it to be a long, stressful day, but I was less scared than many. I live in a high-rise condo building with tight security, but I did eye the balconies.

At 6 p.m., the “shelter at home” order was lifted, even though the second suspect was still at large. I headed out to the store just before 7 p.m. Before I even got there, a mile away, police cars streamed by, sirens going. The final act in the search for and capture of the second, surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, unfolded.

On Saturday morning, I left Watertown early and stopped in Quincy for gas and groceries on my way to the Cape. It had all been so tense and surreal, and those feelings lingered. People were going about their business normally, as if nothing had happened.

I mentioned this to the checkout cashier, and she said, “It must have been so scary up there. I am so glad it is over and that they caught him.”

Later, back home in Watertown, I talked with a young mother who lives nearby in a two-family home. I asked her if she had a mix of feelings about what we all had been though.

“I do,” she nodded. “Friday night at 6, when they said they didn’t catch him, I was scared. I thought, ‘Now I am going to be scared all night.’”

But then, she said, “I thought, ‘This is what people in Iraq and Afghanistan live with all the time.’”

Two hours later, the capture complete, TV stations showed residents pouring onto the streets of Watertown, Cambridge and Boston to cheer the police. At first, the release of pent-up fear and emotions, the respectful applause for police and others who had risked their lives, was cathartic. But then, as it grew, it somehow seemed over the top, more like a party.

Page 2 of 2 - “I thought of the families who had lost someone and the people still in the hospital, and also the suspect,” the Watertown mother said. “I thought how young he is and that he is someone’s son.”

Others I spoke with spent the weekend getting back to regular rhythms, checking in with family members and those they cared for. On Friday, a hospice nurse in Boston had called all her patients to say she would not be able to see them. A Cambridge mother had missed having her son, who is away at Milton Academy, with the rest of the family.

Another friend, who also had been inside all day Friday and ordered not to go to work, emailed, “All I could think was, thank God the second suspect was alive. I guess my main feeling was the difficulty of being able to really integrate the whole experience. It was real enough, but so unreal that it didn’t seem so. There is much profound to think and say, I am sure, but I don’t know how to have the thoughts or put it into words.

“This beautiful (albeit chilly) Sunday morning,” she continued, “I had a thought – which I never have – that church would be a nice place to be. I wondered how the brothers at the Episcopal Monastery would acknowledge the events of the week.”

Finally, a Newton resident, who is a retired lawyer, worried about the legal developments.

“I am glad they caught him right away after the order was lifted,” she said. “If they hadn’t, the next time they try to do something like this, people might not comply. They would say it didn’t work.”

She disagreed with arguments that the one surviving suspect should be viewed as an “enemy combatant” and turned over to military courts. “We should have faith in the American judicial system,” she said.

There is so much still to sort out and sift through, facts to emerge, investigations to continue. I needed a break. I went for a walk in the woods, in Concord, where friendly people greeted one another openly, and dogs bounded along, and the only warnings were for ticks.